Which Bill today?

Not the Bill I’d like, unfortunately. It’s hot, again. And I’m inside, on my computer, in the dark. So instead of having a Bill Murray-in-Tokyo kind of day, I’m reliving Groundhog Day.

Summer used to be my favorite season, like it is for every kid in the world. When you’re school-aged child you don’t care about the heat because you’re running in sprinklers all day and being wet is fun. For some reason, heat isn’t fun as an adult. If only there was an ocean nearby…

But I digress. What I really want to talk about is my CV. On Mondays and Tuesdays I work on my fellowship application. Some days it feels like the millionth I’ve prepared; most days, it’s somewhere in the hundreds range. In actuality, it’s probably the twentieth I’ve done. Lots of work, usually doesn’t pan out. Like the lottery, only with worse odds.

On behalf of my long-suffering graduate cohort out there I’d like to propose an amendment to the scholarly CV—a section for all the fellowship applications we’ve completed. This not only demonstrates our organizational skills and ability to write soul-bearing/crushing statements but is a testament to irrational optimism, the kind that is needed to sustain oneself during hard times. It’s proof that we actually did something with our time, even if it didn’t amount to anything. Something we can show our parents when they wonder what we’ve been doing all these years living far away on the face of the sun, I mean, Texas.